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Sunday, 19 August 2012

Stunning Strumble Weekend.

There can't be many places in the UK where you can sit and have such an incredible weekend of marine wildlife watching. Richard Stonier and Chris Grayell had an epic session yesterday and I joined Richard today for an 11 hour stint that takes some beating the list below gives the numbers but if the birds went quiet the Cetaceans came along and in between seals popped up and chough flew by. They are often quite distant at strumble but conditions were flat calm . Some of trhe Risso's and Common Dolphins were two or three miles out and required a telescope to "dig " them out but we had some really fascinating views of these animals acting perfectly naturally. All four species of cetacean seen over the weekend had small calves acompanying them so its also a good sign in terms of their viability. Its late and I am knackered so I will just cut and paste from Richards posting on Adrian Rogers excellent blog:

http://strumbleheadseawatching.blogspot.co.uk/Saturday...(Sunfish - 2 Seal eating an Auk surrounded by inquisitive ManxiesCommon Dolphin - 2 pods (10 and 25) Bottlenose Dolphin - 1 pod (12) (The 10 Common Dolphin swam East very close inshore and 15 mins later the Bottlenose came out of the bay, mingled for a while then went back where they came from. The 25 Common Dolphin were more distant in the bay Common Porpoise - Showing well

SundaySunfish - 4Common Dolphin - 3 pods (c.20, c.8 and c.5)Risso's Dolphin - 3 pods (c.12, c.12 and c.6 . The Sunfish were very active and seen to leap a number of times)